News

How many times in history have people claimed God to be on their side? A recent study by Nicholas Epley at the university of Chicago might explain why. He asked Christian volunteers their views on a series of controversial topics, such as the death penalty and abortion. They were then asked what they thought the [...]

Chocolate activates a part of the brain that blunts pain and makes it difficult to stop eating. A study by the University of Chicago gave rats chocolate chips to eat while a heat source under their cage warmed its floor. Normally this would cause them to lift their paws, but while they [...]

I know this isn’t a conventional topic for my blog, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s an understandable exception.
Saturday was simply one of the most perfect days of my life. The setting was amazing; the OBE Chapel in the crypt of St Pauls, surrounded by the tombs of William Blake, Wren, Nelson and Wellington [...]

In 1983 an experiment by Benjamin Libet seemed to indicate that our unconscious was responsible for behaviour that we attributed to our own free will. This isn’t something that we as humans take kindly to – after all, you’re in charge of your decisions, aren’t you?
His experiment seemed to say no, so it will be [...]

I spent yesterday sad at the passing of Patrick Swayze. Strange, isn’t it, how we can be moved by the circumstances of someone we’ve never met? I can’t claim him as a hero because I don’t know much of him as a real person, but I connected with him in some way through many of [...]

In one of his last speeches John F Kennedy spoke about how Frank O’Connor the Irish writer, spoke in one of his books, how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try [...]

In a fascinating article you can read in full by clicking on the link at the end of this blog Sharon Begley relates some recent research that shows that, despite it being six million years since apes and humans split from our common ancestor, they are still able to understand our emotional expressions. even more [...]

I’m not a great one for sitting about; relaxing for me is usually some kind of activity like running or martial arts. However this year I have been working on adjusting the balance between ‘doing’ and ‘being’, and I’ve found that giving myself more time and space to watch the world has opened up my [...]

It has long been a basic proposition of rapport building within Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) that people unconsciously trust those who are most like them. This has led to the idea of matching or mirroring other people’s physiology or modes of speech in order to build an unconscious positive connection. Done well, I’ve found that [...]

A new study by evolutionary psychologists at the University of California have discovered a link between male strength, female beauty, and anger levels. Apparently the greater your upper body strength (if male) or your level of attractiveness (if female) the more likely it is that you anger easily.
The authors suggest that anger evolved as part [...]